Don’t Hire Us Because You Like Us

There’s something worth saying out loud.

You shouldn’t work with us just because you like us.

When we meet someone new, I often ask how they chose the person they’re currently working with.

The answers are usually some version of:
“He’s a neighbor.”
“She’s a friend of the family.”
“We met through our kids’ sports.”

All perfectly understandable.

But those aren’t the answers I’m hoping to hear.

It would be refreshing to hear someone say:
“Our values really align.”
“I believe in their investment approach.”
“They’ve given us planning advice that has actually changed our financial lives.”

Because when something as important as your financial life is involved, that’s what should matter.

Likability is certainly a factor. We enjoy it as much as anyone. It makes relationships easier. It makes conversations more natural. And it tends to persist for years.

But it’s not a sufficient reason to choose someone to manage your life savings.

That’s where we’re different.

You should work with us because we believe in something.

Because our approach is grounded in decades of academic research, not opinion or prediction.

Because we’ve built real strategies, like the work behind EBI and LVIG, that are designed with intention, not assembled to match a trend.

Because we care deeply about financial planning. Not just portfolios, but the decisions that actually shape your life.

And because we are fiduciaries. We work for our clients. Not a brokerage firm. Not a bank. Just you.

In short, if you believe what we believe, that’s the foundation for a long and healthy relationship.

If you like us too, that’s even better. It makes the relationship more enjoyable. It makes conversations easier. It probably makes the whole experience better.

But it’s a bonus. The icing on the cake.

Because over time, we’ve found that the best outcomes don’t come from chasing what feels right in the moment. They come from committing to a sound approach and sticking with it. Taking the long view.

Performance, in that sense, isn’t the goal. It’s the result.

The best outcomes we’ve seen come from staying put when it was hardest to do so.

That doesn’t always win the popularity contest.

But in the long run, what matters isn’t who you like the most.
It’s who you can rely on when it counts.

So you can invest your money and your time in the people you actually like.

Take the long view,

When Matt told me he was writing a book, I supported him.

I also wasn’t sure what would come of it.

We had always believed in what we were doing. We had great clients. We were growing. We were already sharing our philosophy with the people we worked with. Part of me wondered if we really needed a book at all.

But Matt felt strongly about it. He wanted to put something out into the world that might help people see things more clearly. So we backed him.

The first line of the book was, “I want this book to change your life.”

That is a big statement. At the time, I didn’t know what to make of it. Turns out, that Odds On is unique – it is not only informative about investing, but it is also engaging on so many other levels.

Over the last ten years, we’ve kept notes from people who read it. Clients, advisors, students, friends, and plenty of people we had never met. Reading back through them now, what stands out is not that people liked the book.

It’s what they did after they read it.

• “I was completely engaged from the first paragraph and couldn’t put it down.”
• “I did not take one break from reading until I was finished, simply because I did not want to put it down.”

Some people found clarity.

• “I was up until after midnight reading your book, and it changed my entire perspective on investing strategies.”
• “Until I picked up your book, I was losing hope for our profession. Your book gave me a much needed breath of fresh air.”

• “We are gradually converting all our existing clients and spreading the word to others in our office.”
• “I found your story so inspiring that I am seriously thinking of leaving my current job to start something new.”

And some of the most meaningful notes had very little to do with investing.

People who had gone through their own medical challenges wrote to Matt after reading his story. They shared things they don’t usually share. That part of the book reached people in a different way.

The book also ended up in places we never expected. Conference rooms. Classrooms. Zoom calls. Podcasts. Libraries. We heard from someone connected to the management of a university endowment who asked their board to read it, hoping it might shape how they approached their decisions.

And then there are the stories that just stick with you.

One of my favorites came from an old friend of Matt’s he hadn’t seen in years. He gave the book to his doctor. The next time he saw him, the doctor walked into the room and skipped everything else. He just wanted to talk about the book.

“When he came into the room he did not ask me how I was doing, he immediately went to talking about the book.”

That’s when it hit me.

The book was doing something we couldn’t have done on our own. It was reaching people at the right time, in their own lives, in their own way.

Ten years later, I don’t think about whether the book was a success.

I think about the people who wrote in to us about it. The ones who made a change. The ones who saw things a little more clearly.

That doesn’t happen very often.

I’m glad Matt wrote it.

And I’m grateful for where it went.

Here’s to the next ten years of learning, sharing, and taking the long view.

I have Odds On to thank for helping me find my tribe at Hill.

Before Hill, with my engineering background, I had become a total nerd about the data around investing. I was obsessed not just with what the evidence said, but with how to build a firm that could give families the best chance to actually put that evidence to work in their real lives.

What I kept running into was that most firms had one or two of the pieces. They could talk about investing. They could talk about behavior and emotion. They could make clients feel cared for. But very few could do all three at once: evidence, behavior and emotion, and real client care through hospitality. I was looking for the holy grail, the island of idealism.

I wanted a firm that could think rigorously, communicate clearly, and help people stay steady enough to actually live out the plan. To really help clients hold onto what matters when markets, life, and emotions inevitably get messy.

I was also, and still am, a huge podcast listener. As luck would have it, I heard Matt on Radical Personal Finance talking about Odds On and the bigger vision behind Hill. Hearing him lay out his and Rick’s island of idealism, and the way Hill thought about evidence, behavior, and serving clients well, was the click moment for me. Hill was not just a firm I admired from afar. It was the firm I would have built myself if I had already built one.

So I guessed at Matt’s email address, sent him a cold email, and the rest is history. I will always be grateful to Odds On for that, because it led me to Hill, to work I love, and to my people.

Take the long view,

Nell